I See Dead People, but I don’t walk away.
It happened two Fridays ago. A guy walks into my office and says “There’s a dead body in the bathroom.” I hurried to the toilet to make sure it wasn’t just a bum passed out under a newspaper, and upon opening the door saw a frequent library user on the floor. I told the guy to go back and tell my staff member to call 911, and I approached the body to see what I could do on the spot. I knelt down and felt his hand to see how cold he was, and that’s when I saw the pool of blood around his head.
I’ve had to do CPR on a friend before, so I was surprised by my reaction. I’ve witnessed much bloodier scenes too, but this caught me off guard for some reason. Maybe I wondered if foul-play was involved. Maybe my life has just been normal for too long, and I’ve turned into a panty-waist. I went back to the door to wait for the police to arrive, and the two students standing there were anxiously waiting to hear what I had to say. The blood flashed across my memory, and I could still feel his hand in mine. “I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”
Within two minutes a couple police came running in. They were a block and a half away when we made the call. They went in and started CPR, and hooked him up a portable defibrillator. The machine voice giving them instructions echoed through the door and all the way down the hall. I could see the two students who saw the body before me were getting more and more freaked out by the minute. I took them into a side hallway and asked how they were doing. The guy who came into my office seemed stressed, but he was not on the brink of a meltdown. The other student was on the verge of collapsing. For a moment I feared that he had walked in on a friend, and was about to start bawling. Then he told us what he had seen.
I had thought I was the third person to see the body when I walked in at 9:35am. I was not. The guy who walked into my office was third. The person I was talking to now walked into the bathroom almost ten minutes before I did, and even he wasn’t first.
He had walked into the bathroom to find a faculty member standing at the sink filling a coffee pot with water. The faculty member turned, smiled and said hello to the student. Because of where the faculty member was, the student could only see the body from the waist down. This poor man had literally had a massive heart attack while standing at the urinal, so his pants were still undone. The student, not really wanting to consider what might possibly be going on, assumed that whatever it was, the faculty member was taking care of the situation. Unfortunately, that university professor didn’t have the flexibility to derail his routine for a dead body at his feet.
There is only one office with a coffee pot within reasonable proximity to that bathroom. And the description the student gave fits one of the three people who have access to that room. They swear it wasn’t them. Whether or not I believe that is irrelevant. What kind of person could stand right next to a dead body and do absolutely nothing? Were they in such shock that they tuned it out? Was the student in such shock that he invented the faculty member? The Detective said it’s pretty common for people to see dead bodies and not do anything about it. I know it’s not a crime to mind your own business, but it pisses me off to think a university employee wouldn’t even call 911. I may not have done everything I could have done, but at least I didn’t finish my coffee before going to check it out.
The only thing that pissed me off more was at 3 o’clock when the reporters started to call. Fucking vultures.
I’ve had to do CPR on a friend before, so I was surprised by my reaction. I’ve witnessed much bloodier scenes too, but this caught me off guard for some reason. Maybe I wondered if foul-play was involved. Maybe my life has just been normal for too long, and I’ve turned into a panty-waist. I went back to the door to wait for the police to arrive, and the two students standing there were anxiously waiting to hear what I had to say. The blood flashed across my memory, and I could still feel his hand in mine. “I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”
Within two minutes a couple police came running in. They were a block and a half away when we made the call. They went in and started CPR, and hooked him up a portable defibrillator. The machine voice giving them instructions echoed through the door and all the way down the hall. I could see the two students who saw the body before me were getting more and more freaked out by the minute. I took them into a side hallway and asked how they were doing. The guy who came into my office seemed stressed, but he was not on the brink of a meltdown. The other student was on the verge of collapsing. For a moment I feared that he had walked in on a friend, and was about to start bawling. Then he told us what he had seen.
I had thought I was the third person to see the body when I walked in at 9:35am. I was not. The guy who walked into my office was third. The person I was talking to now walked into the bathroom almost ten minutes before I did, and even he wasn’t first.
He had walked into the bathroom to find a faculty member standing at the sink filling a coffee pot with water. The faculty member turned, smiled and said hello to the student. Because of where the faculty member was, the student could only see the body from the waist down. This poor man had literally had a massive heart attack while standing at the urinal, so his pants were still undone. The student, not really wanting to consider what might possibly be going on, assumed that whatever it was, the faculty member was taking care of the situation. Unfortunately, that university professor didn’t have the flexibility to derail his routine for a dead body at his feet.
There is only one office with a coffee pot within reasonable proximity to that bathroom. And the description the student gave fits one of the three people who have access to that room. They swear it wasn’t them. Whether or not I believe that is irrelevant. What kind of person could stand right next to a dead body and do absolutely nothing? Were they in such shock that they tuned it out? Was the student in such shock that he invented the faculty member? The Detective said it’s pretty common for people to see dead bodies and not do anything about it. I know it’s not a crime to mind your own business, but it pisses me off to think a university employee wouldn’t even call 911. I may not have done everything I could have done, but at least I didn’t finish my coffee before going to check it out.
The only thing that pissed me off more was at 3 o’clock when the reporters started to call. Fucking vultures.
posted by Sylow_P | 10:58 AM
4 Comments:
I beat that damned Canuck to this posting.
Now I will go back and actually read it.
I grew up playing a lot of golf. I also smoked a lot of weed. Those things didn't get combined until I was about 25, and it was with disastrous effects. I would hit the ball, walk for about 2 minutes and then realize I had no idea where I was going. It had never occurred to me to pay attention to where my ball was heading. I'd end up dropping a ball somewhere, hitting it, and doing it all again. I lost every ball in my bag.
As I have mentioned on my blog a few times, I am a new convert to coffee addiction. Now, my coffee addiction and my corpse finding have never mixed, but if they do, I hope I will do the right thing.
That was uncalled for, Sparkelstone. You got something against Canadians?
I've got this defense mechanism that I developed from my early life. If I'm not careful, I automatically detach myself from just about any seriously bad scene. I never even realized that I did this thing until someone pointed it out to me. I had to learn to stay in a situation and be present for what's going on.
On September 11, 2001, Sparklestone and I were driving to work when we heard on NPR that a plane from NY had crashed into a building. I distinctly remember that Sparkle went white and was immediately concerned about his parents who were to fly into our town that very day. I thought to myself, "He's really taking this too seriously." It wasn't until I got into my office and my co-workers had the news on that I could allow myself to acknowledge what happened. When I woke up to my reality, I had to call Sparkle right then to find out what was going on. When I do this thing, I call it "going someplace else." There's no real other destination that I go to, it's just someplace where whatever bad thing that is happening isn't happening.
I think my going someplace else definitely saved my life and my mind when I was a kid. But I've since learned that staying in the present makes me a whole person and that my grown up mind really can handle what's going on.
Your story made me really sad for the coffee guy. Not sad for him in a way that says what he did is OK... but sad that he wasn't there in that moment and that he didn't become the human he could have been if he hadn't gone somewhere else.
Your story also makes me wonder what I've missed without my realizing it. I hope I have enough opportunties to make up for whatever those things were.
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